Bob Mayer
Eternity Base
Prologue
“The last load,” the army major in the gray parka remarked.
“Amen to that,” Captain Reinhart muttered. Through the scratched Plexiglas windshield, he glanced at the frozen runway splayed out in front of his plane. To his left rear, a staircase descended into the cargo bay of the C-130 transport where his loadmaster was securing the few pallets of luggage the passengers had carried on board. Along the walls, the major’s soldiers, bundled up in cold-weather gear, were seated on red web seats, ready to get started on the long journey out of here.
Reinhart couldn’t blame them. He’d brought them here four months ago from Vietnam via McMurdo Station and then spent the intervening time flying back from the Station every opportunity the weather gave, bringing the men equipment and supplies for whatever they were building here in the frozen wasteland of the Antarctic. A week ago that process had reversed and he’d started bringing out equipment and people. The outflow in equipment and supplies had been considerably less than the inflow. Reinhart was anxious to go.
The sky was clear and the wind had died down. The weather report from McMurdo looked good, but Reinhart had long ago learned that the Antarctic was one place where weather reports could be counted on about as far as the report itself could be folded into a paper airplane and thrown. The only constant in the weather here was change — and the change was usually for the worse.
Reinhart wasn’t sure who the major worked for. The name tag on the major’s parka read Glaston. All Reinhart knew was that four months ago he had been ordered to do whatever the man said. Glaston had been there waiting to receive their cargo every time they’d landed at Eternity Base — the code name of this unmarked location. Today even Glaston was going out with them. If anyone was remaining behind, Reinhart did not know and cared even less. It was their last flight from Eternity Base, and successfully completing it was his only concern.
On what served as an “airstrip,” the plane sat in a large bowl of ice surrounded on three sides by ice ridges and intermittent towering mountains punching through the thick polar cap; the strip pointed toward the one open side. The hulking C-130, with four powerful turboprop engines mounted on its broad wings, was the most reliable cargo airplane ever to fly, and Reinhart felt confident in its abilities. Bracketed over the plane’s wheels were sets of skis that allowed them to negotiate the 2,000 meters of relatively level ice and snow that these people called a runway.
“Closing the ramp,” the loadmaster announced in Reinhart’s headset. In the rear of the plane, the back ramp lifted from the thin, powdery snow as hydraulic arms pulled it up. Descending from the high dark hole that led to the uplifted tail came the top section of the ramp. Like jaws closing, the two shut against the swirling frozen air outside. The heaters fought a losing battle against the cold as they pumped hot air out of pipes in the ceiling of the cargo bay, ten feet overhead.
Reinhart turned to Glaston. “We’re all set, sir.”
The major simply nodded and clambered down the steps to take his seat in the rear.
“Let’s do it,” Reinhart told the copilot. Carefully, they turned the nose straight on line, due south. As Reinhart increased throttle, the plane slowly gathered momentum. The propellers and skis threw up a plume of snow behind.
Reinhart waited until he was satisfied they had enough speed and then pulled in the yoke. The 130’s nose lifted and the plane crawled into the air. Once he reached sufficient altitude to clear the mountains, Reinhart banked hard right and headed west. In the distance, out the right window, the ice pack that hugged the shore of Antarctica could be seen as a tumbled broken mass extending to the horizon.
Reinhart turned over the controls to his copilot. Two hours and they’d be at McMurdo; the passengers would be off-loaded for transfer to another aircraft, and he and his crew could begin the long, stop-filled flight back to their home base in Hawaii. After four months down here, they were more than ready to see loved ones and celebrate a sunny Christmas.
This whole mission had been strange from the initial tasking back in early September. Reinhart and the four members of his crew had flown the Hawaii-Pago, Pago-Christchurch, New Zealand-McMurdo Base, Antarctica, run several times in the past. Almost every cargo crew in their squadron stationed at Hickam Air Force Base received the honors every so often. But four months ago they’d been tasked “for the duration of the mission” to support Glaston. They’d met him at a dirt airstrip outside a classified Special Forces camp in Vietnam, only to be told to fly to the U.S. Antarctic research station at McMurdo and take on transloaded cargo from other C-130 cargo planes coming in from New Zealand, then fly the cargo out to this site. What had been especially interesting about the mission was the fact that as far as their parent unit knew, they were still in Vietnam. All their mail had come through that theater before being forwarded down here.
“I’ve got the beacon clear,” the copilot informed Reinhart.
As long as they kept the needle on the direction finder centered, they’d come in right on top of McMurdo. That was another odd thing. They’d flown every mission on instruments in both directions, never once using a map — not that maps were very useful over the frozen wasteland of Antarctica. As any worthwhile pilot would, Reinhart had a reasonably good idea of where Eternity Base was, based on both flight time and azimuth. Satisfied that all was going well, he settled back in his seat for a nap. He’d need the rest if he was going to take the eight-hour leg from McMurdo to New Zealand.
Two hours later a nudge on Reinhart’s shoulder awakened him. “McMurdo,” the copilot announced.
Out of the left window Reinhart saw the sprawl of buildings that made up the largest human habitation in the continent. With the onslaught of winter just a few months away, the population would drop from its summer high of six hundred to less than a hundred caretakers. Out the right window the massive form of Mount Erebus, an active volcano, filled the horizon twenty-four miles away. Directly below lay the edge of the massive Ross Ice Shelf, more than five hundred miles from its southern origin at the foot of the Queen Maud Mountains.
The copilot swung them around for a final approach to McMurdo’s ice strip. As soon as the skis touched, he reduced throttle and upped flaps for maximum stop. They slid down the runway, using the tail to keep them on line. Slowly the aircraft’s speed dropped.
Reinhart could see two other C-130s sitting near the field’s operation tower. One of those would take their cargo and passengers for the trip back to Vietnam, and then they would be free to go. After radioing the tower for instructions, they taxied over to the designated plane and idled the engines. A forklift was waiting to take off the pallets. As soon as the ramp was open, the soldiers stomped across the snow and onto another plane while Reinhart’s two enlisted crewmen rolled out the pallets.
Glaston was the last to leave, waiting in the cockpit until all had been cross-loaded. “Anxious to get home, I suppose?”
Reinhart grinned, the adrenaline of pleasant anticipation flowing. “Damn right. We’re talking white beach and tanned women back in Hawaii.”
Glaston nodded. “Have a good flight. We’ve appreciated your help. My superiors will be forwarding letters of commendation for you and your crew to your headquarters.”
That was the least they could do, Reinhart thought, to pay them back for spending four months living in a damn Quonset hut buried under the snow at McMurdo and flying a load every time the weather cleared. Of course things could have been worse: they actually could have been flying missions in Vietnam. “I appreciate that, sir.”